Evolutionary many-objective optimization by MO-NSGA-II with enhanced mating selection

Many-objective optimization deals with problems with more than three objectives. The rapid growth of non-dominated solutions with the increase of the number of objectives weakens the search ability of Pareto-dominance-based multiobjective evolutionary algorithms. MO-NSGA-II strengthens its dominance-based predecessor, NSGA-II, by guiding the search process with reference points. In this paper, we further improve MO-NSGA-II by enhancing its mating selection mechanism with a hierarchical selection and a neighborhood concept based on the reference points. Experimental results confirm that the proposed ideas lead to better solution quality.